


Dread Goddess of Human Speech

by poetic_nonsense



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (the angst is from back in the Odyssey days though we're all good here), Angst, Aziraphale is rather jealous on this point, Crowley was in the Odyssey, Fluff, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Humor, I'd say pre-relationship (as much as that ever applies to Aziraphale and Crowley in-canon anyway), Introspection, M/M, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Other, Post-Apocalypse, Reminiscing, The Odyssey - Freeform, and Aziraphale doesn’t know whether to feel envy or really quite extraordinary amounts of attraction, but honestly I think it can be read pretty much any way, in short: Crowley was Circe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 23:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20366614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_nonsense/pseuds/poetic_nonsense
Summary: It was a very good wine and a very pleasant couch, and by the time he was making politely interested noises at the yellowed and slightly smelly engravings in some Victorian edition ofThe Odyssey,he was just relaxed and vaguely bored enough to peer at a picture of Circe (“Oh, isn’t it marvelous, look at how beautifully the hogs have been rendered!”) and say, “Well, I never let my hair getthatlong, but the rest is all right, I guess.”





	Dread Goddess of Human Speech

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to code the footnotes kicked my ass, so I apologize about that; footnotes are in the end notes, and I apologize for the amount of scrolling and/or clicking back and forth it entails. I'll try to get those fixed up as soon as possible! Thanks for your patience!
> 
> WARNING: There are references to the sacrifice of Iphigenia. These are fairly brief and non-graphic, but please be forewarned if that's something that might bother you!
> 
> If anyone's interested, this is the illustration I was thinking of: [here](http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Mythology/Paintings/en/TheUnhappyGreeksTurnedIntoSwine.html)
> 
> If your Odyssey could use some touching up, may I suggest this excellent and hilarious summary: [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-3rHQ70Pag) (Darks if you're reading it's from the Beowulf lady, watch the fucking video)

The problem with stopping the apocalypse, cutting ties with your Head Offices, and freeing yourself from the obligation to pretend to despise your best friend, is that there isn’t really any sort of clear-cut indicator of what to do afterward.

What Crowley and Aziraphale had arrived at, by unspoken-unanimity-or-close-enough-thereto, was picking things up where the whole Apocawasn’t had so rudely cut in. Except more of it. And nicer. Mostly what this meant was making lots of excuses to spend time together, although with less and less in the way of excuses, which was handy, because it left more time for spending together. Excuses were time-consuming, and sometimes required prior coordination.

What Crowley had put together by way of excuse this evening was picking up a rather nice bottle of wine from the cellar of someone who was rather less-than-nice and really didn’t need it, and heading over to the bookshop, where he was confident he could count on Aziraphale to come up with the rest of the excuse.*

Aziraphale did have the rest of the excuse, and it was a good one, as far as your everyday excuses went. One of his associate’s niece’s grandson’s cousin’s daughter’s business partners had an uncle who’d just died, and had been left with a good number of father’s uncle’s kindly-old-mentor’s heirloom collection’s books, and no real desire for them, and Aziraphale had “in short, _ cleaned up_, as they say, Crowley.”

Luckily, the wine was just right for an evening spent talking and drinking and showing off new old books that one probably didn’t need.

So, Crowley poured himself a generous glass and settled down on the couch, and very good-humoredly let Aziraphale chatter happily away about his newly acquired treasures. Aziraphale flitted back and forth between the endtable and the couch to show Crowley the binding of this one, the endpapers on this, that’s how you can tell it’s a first edition, you know, after it got popular and went for a reprint the publisher thought this was much too gaudy, and Crowley smiled up at him and looked where he pointed and made appreciative sounds at some very dull old books. He also leaned over to refill Aziraphale’s glass from time to time, which made Aziraphale stop for a moment and smile at him every time.

In short, Crowley was settling in for a very pleasant sort of evening.

It was a very good wine and a very pleasant couch, and by the time he was making politely interested noises at the yellowed and slightly smelly engravings in some Victorian edition of _ The Odyssey_, he was just relaxed and vaguely bored enough to peer at a picture of Circe (“Oh, isn’t it marvelous, look at how beautifully the hogs have been rendered!”) and say, “Well, I never let my hair get _ that _ long, but the rest is all right, I guess.”

“Yes, well, you know the Victorians, they--” Aziraphale started to say, and then startled, and looked up at Crowley. “Were you really?”

Crowley grinned at him, sprawling as dramatically as possible into the corner of the couch. “Never met a sorceress before, angel?”

Aziraphale seemed bereft of his usual expansive vocabulary for a moment before he came up with, “Evidently I have,” and turned back to examine the illustration with rather more interest.

“What were you doing over there?”

Crowley managed to coordinate his limbs enough to sit up without spilling his wine, and absentmindedly reached up to adjust his sunglasses before remembering that he had taken them off at some point.**

“Oh, I was making my way around Greece about that time. Very keen on a good time, the Greeks. Some very flighty tempers, too. Wonderful temptation opportunities. And then they had that war going on, of course.”

He didn’t mention that he hadn’t actually seen much of the war. Or any of it, actually. He’d been a bit involved with the build-up -- lots of opportunities to be an irritation when people were getting ready for a massive invasion, let alone one with so many tenuous alliances involved.

Truth be told, though, there wasn’t much for him to do.

Oh, he caused a quarrel here and there, a few mix-ups in the supply-loading, but the Acheans were already having one of the most blessable runs of bad luck Crowley had ever seen. Not really much more inconvenienced a sailing fleet can get than the winds refusing to blow for two blessed months.***

Of course, then someone had got it into his head that the way to resolve this was to murder his own daughter.

That was the other side to the Greeks, Crowley supposed. They had some very strange ideas about gods and what they wanted. How anyone could decide that the way to solve his problems was to butcher an innocent girl -- let alone a _ father _ \--

He could still smell the burning of flesh and laurel, hear the cacophonous roars of brutish gratification mingled lowly with apprehension, see the orange and black and the triumphant face of a man who didn’t think he’d done anything wrong --

By the time Crowley had rushed there, with a hart she’d picked up somewhere, ready to pull the same thwarting he’d done with Isaac, she was too late.

She’d handed off the deer to someone, said a few words to the girl’s mother, who was already working on a fairly impressive batch of wrath on her own, and went off to find herself some barren little island in the middle of nowhere to spend the better part of twenty years with herself and a miraculous stock of gratifyingly dubious wine.

“You met Odysseus, then?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley pulled himself out of his thoughts and took a healthy gulp of wine while he remembered what they were talking about.

“Oh, yeah. Very good conver-- con-- very good talking partner, him. Good to drink with, loads of stories. Played a mean game of zatrikion. Un_believably _ bad luck, though. Man could find the one bad grape in a vineyard.” Crowley paused. "Not that he'd actually mind that one too much, though. Man could drink like an ox."

Crowley had drunk with him for two hours, but the second she'd raised her hand to snap he'd had his sword out and pointed at her.

That had been the first interesting thing in a while.****

He watched Aziraphale sit absently down alongside him whilst he studied the engraving and the passage around it intently, as though he couldn’t probably recite the whole blessed thing backwards. He pulled up one foot onto the couch, to rest just shy of Aziraphale’s space.

“So you… how did you…” Aziraphale cleared his throat determinedly. “Baneful drugs?”

Crowley grinned at the return to more comfortable territory. “For Someone’s sake, angel, I just got them drunk. Not my fault they were lightweights.”*****

“And, ah… pigs?”

Crowley shrugged. “Why not? I had to do something wily. I was sort of skating by at the time. Wasn’t getting nearly the numbers Scylla and Charybdis were sending back downstairs. Couldn’t really pass up the opportunity to deprive civilization of a boatload of _ fine, upstanding _ young soldiers. Their manners were bad enough, anyway. Prob’ly’ve been happier in the sty.”

Crowley also didn’t mention that she hadn’t been drinking nearly long enough by that point and had still been on _ men are pigs, _ so she had mostly been making it literal.

Aziraphale gave him a primly reproving sort of look, but wiggled a bit closer while he turned back to the book. “Bit of a wash, then, wasn’t it, when you had to turn them back? Wouldn’t have looked very good to write up being thwarted by a human… 

“Oh, good heavens, Crowley, you didn’t tempt that beleaguered man into adultery--?”

“Heaven, no! ...Thought about it once or twice, just for the sake of it, but honestly, that man wouldn’t have had eyes for anyone but his wife if it’d taken him another twenty blessed years to get back. That old fart Homer just added the steamy bits to make it more exciting. After the Iliad, you know, had to sex it up a bit. Not a lot of action in that story, really. Mostly just terror and a lot of discomfort. None of them had seen a mattress in years by the time they ran into me. Old bastard threw in a ghost story too, now I think of it. I just told them that bloke in the cave up north could probably give better directions, and that he liked mutton.”

“You met Homer, too?” asked Aziraphale, looking envious and a little betrayed, like Crowley had just let slip he’d been at Douarnenez for the invention of kouign-amann without him.

Crowley made a face, in an attempt to make Aziraphale feel better.

“A bit. I heard him perform a few times. Tried to have him out for drinks, once. Nice voice, but couldn’t keep a story short to save his life.” He refilled Aziraphale’s glass, which didn’t really need refilling. “Where were you all this time, then?”

"Oh, here and there. Mostly running errands for prophets and whatnot. There was a rather lovely library in Niniveh about that time. And there was David, of course. Still, I would have liked to meet the wisest of the Greeks,” he sighed wistfully. “Most of the ones I met could have done with a bit of wisdom.”

Crowley made a very undignified snorting sound and slid down on the couch. “Oh, yeah, wisest of the Greeks, sure. Wise enough to taunt the weird, superhumanly strong goat herder you’ve just given a massive grudge while still within rock throwing range.”******

“That’s hubris, my dear,” Aziraphale sniffed. “That’s a heroic flaw.”

“‘t was a bloody hormonal bad idea,” Crowley grumbled into his wine.

Humans were full of bad ideas. Even the wise ones made some truly daft decisions. Sometimes that was okay, though. Made for some good conversations. Made you feel better about yours. Odysseus made so many mistakes, even setting aside the things that weren’t his fault, and he was pining so badly for his wife and his kid and his home. Anyone could see the guy was having a really, really rough time. But he had some good ideas too, about life and the world and people and what was important.

“You’d have liked him,” Crowley said, looking down into his wine as though he could see the ships again if he looked hard enough. “He was... a good man. Interesting. And wise. I didn’t really try very hard at tempting him, really, but I doubt I would’ve had much luck anyway. He really just wanted to get back to his family, and it was obvious he wasn’t gonna get there, not for a long while, so I tried to get him to stay and just relax, just have a good time for a while and be okay. He only stayed for a year, and then he couldn’t bear not being on his way, but it… it was a good year, while he stayed. ...Anyway. You’d have liked him.”

When Crowley looked up, Aziraphale was looking at him with a thoughtful expression. He watched Aziraphale’s gaze dip to study the illustration again, the mythicized Circe with her long cascade of hair, her voluptuously plump form, her elegant grip on the magical wand…

And then he looked up at Crowley, with an expression in his eyes as though the figure in the book didn’t hold a candle to Crowley, awkwardly arranged, embarrassed, and on the way to sloshed, as though Crowley were the one who shone with dazzling light. And he smiled.

“My dear, if I had been there, Odysseus isn’t the one I would’ve been occupied with.”

Crowley didn’t know what to do. He didn’t remember how to survive moments like this. He had a heart for some reason, and it was no longer playing by the sheet music. His wineglass was trembling.

“ ,” said his mouth, which was having difficulty with the concept of producing sound while Aziraphale was looking at him like _ that _.

Crowley didn’t blink.

Aziraphale didn’t blink, and kept smiling.

“You haven’t showed me the rest of your books,” he managed hoarsely, and Aziraphale’s smile intensified for a single near-discorporation moment before he turned away and put down his wineglass, making disapproving noises at himself for holding it so near the book, and rose excitedly to exchange _ The Odyssey _ for another venerable old volume.

Crowley backed away from the edge of imminent and total destruction and found himself smiling after Aziraphale. He watched Aziraphale tut over the small mountain of books and remembered something Odysseus had told her, in the last days before he disappeared over the horizon and solitude became too quiet.

_ There comes a time when the world could be full of wonders beyond imagining and pleasures beyond comprehension, but none of it could compare with the comfort of being home. _

Aziraphale turned back with a smile and a small, shabby book bound in cracked red leather, and Crowley’s smile widened into a grin as he pushed himself up, because_ The Decameron_, he _ knew _ that one, and patted the seat next to him. _ Wisest, definitely. _

**Author's Note:**

> *This whole collaboration lark was working even better now that they didn’t have to spend time totting up to make sure it all worked out evenly.
> 
> **It was at 11:47, in order to peer at a very densely-printed copy of the Vulgate Cycle, after Aziraphale had pointed to a passage about some bloke called Galehaut and asked if it didn’t seem “peculiarly familiar?”
> 
> ***Crowley had done some investigating, and to the best he could tell, it wasn’t the result of any meddling, divine or demonic. Just a freak natural event and a bloody great coincidence.
> 
> ****Well, that, and that he hadn’t once tried to proposition her.
> 
> *****Homer had had an interesting mix of success in relating the story.
> 
> Firstly, the wolves and lions and whatnot were not under any particular influence of Crowley’s, but despite Crowley’s best efforts to cut herself off from humanity, the odd sailor or two kept washing up with enough regularity that the natural scavengers of the place figured out soon enough where the fat little hogs were coming from, and were as happy as anyone would be to greet dinner nicely.
> 
> Secondly, Crowley was indeed at the loom when Eurylochus and his group arrived, but she had only just sat down to figure it out for something to do while she drank, and her competence level was nowhere near that of a goddess. The colors were nothing to write home about, (there were only multiple because she couldn’t decide between black and dark grey), and the end result only looked like much of anything because she imagined weaving couldn’t be that difficult. (Her singing would have been nice, if it wasn’t off-key.)
> 
> Thirdly, Crowley did not have a wand, as such. It was, in fact, a very nice back-scratcher that she’d just had to pluck out of the sticky-fingered hand of one of the interlopers, and was therefore still in hand shortly thereafter when she’d decided it had all gone on Long Enough.
> 
> ******Odysseus had miserably told Crowley that story, and how many men it had gotten killed, on the sixth day he’d been there. Crowley hadn’t been done being miserable yet either, and being miserable with someone else was always more satisfying, so they were miserable together for a couple hours until he told Crowley a story about a boar hunt and she told him a story about squids and they laughed for hours on end. Crowley thought it was the first good laugh either of them had had for a while.
> 
> Feel free (and welcome) to come hang with me on [Tumblr](https://poetic----nonsense.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
